Stars
by AbominableDante
Summary: The 'Bell Peppers and Beef' is a lie. Spike POV.


**Author's Notes: **The **'**bell peppers and beef' is a lie.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Cowboy Bebop or the characters.

**Warnings: **Eh.

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**Stars

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**In the city, I could never see the stars. Even when I climbed to the highest skyscraper, there was too much light. It was as if we'd put a screen over the sky, so we could pretend that outer space never was, and that we weren't from a single host planet, now long abandoned.

Earth. A veritable wasteland now. No one living remembers what life was like back then, when we populated only one world.

Mars. A bustling, worldwide metropolis, and all I'd ever known. Up until age twenty-three, I didn't believe stars even existed. I was the see-it-to-believe-it type of guy.

Now in the cold hull of Jet's ship I'm surrounded by them, and I wonder if perhaps I'm dreaming. Or am I dead, riding Charon's boat to the underworld? Ancient religions believed that the stars were past ancestors looking down on them from the heavens. With that theory, one could believe that the number of then would increase infinitely until the sky was filled with blinding light.

If one knew anything about the universe, they'd know that the stars are, one by one, going out. Like little cigarette butts in the rain, like little fireflies on the last night before the end of summer, fewer and fewer and fewer until there is only the muffled blackness that is nothing.

But that's depressing.

Everything is slower here, dreamlike. It takes a few days to get between planets, even with the new gates opening. Soon the crew is moving as if through water, as if the false gravity the ship provides by some scientific magic doesn't exist. It turns the muscles to mush, and it's hard to get up the will to remedy that. I never slept this much back home; didn't really have the time.

"Stop daydreaming, Spike," Jet growls behind me, "The show's starting, and we need money if you like a full stomach."

I've no interest in bounty heads right now, and I don't move, but I do cock an ear and half-listen, just in case a number's high enough to catch my attention. I go back to thinking of the way streetlamps would shine so brightly that the sidewalks would be rivers of daylight in the evenings. All shadows were pitch; midnight pools filled with dangers that would pull you in like a rip tide.

I can hear the ship around me, the dull creaks and bangs of automated metal, the wind of the filtered air through the ducts. If I sit still enough, could I feel the current of space pulling at us as we ghost through? We, tiny fish in the bottomless ocean of space.

The concept of infinite space still throws me. I could understand nonexistence, but the opposite, the unknown, the possibilities are too unsure for me to feel comfortable with. It feels like a dream if you think too hard out here.

"Spike, you paying attention?"

"Mm." Not really. He still can't tell the difference between a yes and no hum; it's just as well. I keep my eyes where they are, gazing out at the unmoving stars. Deep in the bowels of the ship I can feel the jet engines start up, roar for a few minutes and cut off again, to give up a small boost of speed and correct our direction. Since running out of gas a few months back, I take undue comfort in the inner workings of this ship. Ugly and old as it is, when you're out this far in the airless dreamworld, you take nothing for granted.

"No good bounties. Can't someone rob a bank or something already?" The TV clicks off and Jet gets to his feet, perhaps to make up whatever's left in the kitchen as a stir fry.

"Not a very appropriate thing to want for an ex-cop, is it Jet? Illegal activities and so on…"

"I like eating."

Concepts changing over an empty stomach. Of course, I knew exactly what he meant. I could feel my own stomach grumbling now. I turn away from the window and struggle out of the chair. I'd been sitting there longer than I'd thought if my legs had gone to sleep, and I mused about how slippery time was without a proper day or night. I peered through the kitchen's doorway and heard Jet sigh at the empty fridge.

"Looks like bell peppers and beef again tonight."

"Except without the beef. I keep saying you shouldn't call it what it isn't."

"Just shut up and get chopping, Spike."

How surreal, like we're married or something. Perhaps I've been in space too long, and that it's made sleep and life one in the same. Even when I dream, I'm here; it's that bad.

I grab a knife and start slicing at a green pepper, careful to pull out the seeds and not to cut my fingers. I bleed red no matter what world I exist in. I'm not yet ready to become a star.

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_Fin Stars_

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